Workday Reviews

Workday is an HR management or a talent management tool. It is basically the full suite of HR core processes. It has got modules within it for benefits for HR administration and talent acquisition. 

We have been able to reduce the administrative burden of HR so that HR can focus more on strategic activities rather than administrative work. It also provides better visibility in reporting on benefits.

It helps the users to enroll for the benefits automatically and update their life events without the involvement of HR individuals or back-office staff. It enables a person to take action on their own. It reduces the administrative burden on HR and puts the ownership on the person that is going through the life event, whether it is having a child, taking a leave of absence, or something else. 

There are easy ways to integrate Workday with your common benefits. At least in the USA, it can be integrated with common benefits providers such as Fidelity, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, etc. It has got a connector that is able to connect with the vendor or the third party to which you are trying to send the eligibility file. It basically allows us to automate or set up the tool, and the integration with the provider is a lot quicker than competing tools. 

When it comes to reporting on just eligibility and SLSA, it is a lot more user-intuitive. Depending on the purpose of what you are doing, you can grant security rights or roles, for example, you can control whether someone is a benefits administrator doing an independent audit. Workday makes it very easy to do that. It significantly simplifies the reporting process. 

It is very unique as compared to other tools in terms of the employee master data and how it is organized. That's why sometimes the information needs to sit in two different systems because, in Workday, it is organized differently. This issue is not related to benefits. It is more or so related to how you categorize employees. I don't think this is a problem that could be solved. Workday is aware of this. It is one of those kinds of situations that you just got to live with.

I have been using Workday since 2013.

It is very stable, but obviously, it is all about how you set it up and configure it. At the end of the day, the technology works. It is all about setting it up the right way.

We use it across the organization for all 10,000 employees. As we hire more or acquire more companies, it is definitely going to be used more.

We have around 10,000 users, and about 4,000 of them are back-office employees. That would be HR, finance, supply chain, and IT. The other half of the organization is using it sparingly, but this is the revenue-generating workforce that is sitting in the field. These could be plant workers, plant supervisors, and craft labor. Basically, we just log in to look at their paycheck and other things, but we use the app to look at their leave balances.

They do a great job of selling the tool, but for support, you are kind of on your own. You either decide to go with a vendor to support you, or you build capabilities in-house. It is a common model. I know it sounds like they are leaving you out to dry, but in today's day and age, this is a common model with most providers.

If we need additional stuff that we are not getting, they are great at providing that. In terms of supporting the application, I can't even rank them because, frankly, they don't do it. It is something for which we have to pay an external vendor to provide the service.

We went from Legacy ERP to Workday. We switched because of its simplicity, ease of use, and a lot simpler and easier user interface.

The initial setup was complex but manageable. I have worked on a couple of deployments. The last one within the last year was supposed to take eight months, but it took a year and a half. That was mainly because of the integrations taking a lot longer than I anticipated and problems with the vendor who was implementing it. The vendor did a series of missteps that didn't help.

We had an implementation partner who didn't do a very good job. We have 10 to 20 people to maintain it, but it depends on the complexity of your configuration and builds. 

You have the license fee per module, and then you have a kind of annual training fee, which is a kind of add-on. I wouldn't say it is exhaustive; it is minor. Licensing is pretty transparent for most of the part.

We considered all the top leading HCM solutions, such as SuccessFactors, Oracle HCM, and UltiPro. It was a $5 million to $10 million investment for us.

I would advise making sure that your HR data is clean. Take your time. Everybody is eager to implement a new shiny toy, but a lot of cleanups are required to get your house in order. You have got to clean up your HR data and make sure that there are no duplicate employees, people are assigned to the right job descriptions, and there are no such people who are terminated but still sit in your organization. When you actually migrate the data, all such issues will create a lot of problems. 

It is a leading talent management tool, and it has got the largest market share. I would rate Workday a ten out of ten.

Our primary use case for Workday – as we had it integrated into the organization as an HRIS – is as something for the organization to run off of.

Before Workday, we did everything manually and were working from within a few systems. This solution has helped us centralize the whole organization. Also, considering the pandemic, we needed everyone to work together and be efficient as everyone was working remotely.

I think that the key component here is to have everything centralized and that is most valuable for me. The reason this feature is valuable is that when you're working with people in different geographic regions or with those who may or may not be in the office, this solution helps in getting everything organized.

My opinion is that this solution can improve the overall integrations and add more automation. I think anything that could be on a self-serve basis would work quite well.

I have been using Workday for about one year.

I would rate the stability of this solution a nine, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the scalability of this solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

I would rate the technical support of this solution a seven, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

Neutral

I would say that we have definitely seen a return on investment.

This solution is deployed on the cloud for our company.

When it comes to other people looking into this solution, I would advise looking at your work order and the types of things you need. There are tons of different applications out there and it's all about finding the one that's best for you and that fits the most to your organization's needs.

I would rate Workday as a solution an eight, on a scale from one to 10, with one being the worst and 10 being the best.

The primary use case for the product in our environment is to manage the entire employee lifecycle, from recruitment to retirement.

The product's most valuable features include its intuitive user interface, seamless integration with other systems like Microsoft Outlook for calendar management, and comprehensive reporting capabilities that provide insights into workforce analytics.

They could improve the product areas such as enhancing the interview scheduling module to support more flexible online assessments within the platform. Additionally, further integration with third-party applications could broaden its functionality.

I have been using Workday for approximately three years. 

The product is stable. 

The product is scalable. 

The technical support services are excellent.

Positive

We previously used Oracle Taleo for candidate tracking but switched to Workday due to Taleo's less intuitive workflow management.

The initial setup was complex due to the need for detailed configuration and integration with existing systems. 

We took help from a vendor team for product implementation. 

We evaluated SAP SuccessFactors and ADP Workforce Now. However, Workday stood out due to its superior user experience, robust feature set, and scalability.

Overall, the product has been instrumental in modernizing our HR operations. Its training resources help us keep up with updates and new features.

I rate it an eight out of ten.

Our HR team use it to manage all employee information and processes. 

 It is easy to use and straightforward.

This solution could be made easier to use by continuing to release new improvements. 

I have been using this solution for six months. 

This is a stable solution. 

I have not needed to contact customer support. 

I would rate this solution a ten out of ten. 

Workday provides a number of offerings. I've seen it primarily being used for human capital management, which includes onboarding, the entire employee lifecycles from recruiting to offboarding, payroll, benefits, absence, and time tracking.

Unlike some of its competitors such as PeopleSoft, Oracle, or SAP, Workday is cloud-based. Workday is built natively in the cloud, and you're always on the most recent version. 

In terms of the cloud provider, they do have their own data centers. They've got one in Portland. They've got one in North Carolina, one in Dublin, Ireland, and maybe one or two at other places. I have heard that ultimately the underlying technology is AWS, but I'm not certain of that. 

Technically, it's a hybrid model. Their enterprise bus model is such that technically you share server resources with other customers. A lot of customers don't actually know that, but if we're all running a lot of integrations or doing a lot of data processing at once, it's possible that the server could be impacted, and whoever is providing the maintenance would have to then throttle and pull resources from somewhere else. However, most customers don't experience any type of real performance issues, and then from a security standpoint, even though they're shared server resources, everything is of course constrained to just that particular customer. No other customer could view a separate customer's data or things of that nature.

Based on the corporations I've worked for and I've consulted with, it surprised me how immature at times they are with their people processes. There is such a focus on scaling the revenue-generating arm of the business that oftentimes, the operations are somewhat neglected. Workday creates a framework where you can scale the operations of the business to support what's going to drive revenue. It creates operational efficiencies.

There is a lot to like about it. I really enjoy the business process framework. It's something that's really seamless. It allows you to have people within the flow. They get assigned a task to complete something to approve, etc. That's a really good piece of functionality that Workday offers. Their out-of-the-box reporting framework is also really powerful in terms of what it provides. These would be two things that I would highlight.

Workday does have a community site where people can go on and off for suggestions. They call them Brainstorms, and you can vote them up. That is something that they do well, but oftentimes, they seem to be racing to deliver something based on what a competitor is delivering. For example, if they hear SAP has this new functionality and learning that's going to be coming out, they prioritize there, which makes sense, but unfortunately, some of these Brainstorms may get neglected where the product might not be improved as quickly or as needed for the customers. You might be waiting for a year or two to get a feature that you'd like released. They should pay more attention to customer feedback and ensure that customer feedback is an essential part of their product roadmap.

I've been using Workday for about eight years.

Its stability is really strong. It is reliable.

With respect to scalability, Workday does quite well. It has a lot of packaged integrations. It has a lot of in-house offerings. It allows an organization to scale.

We have over 10,000 employees. We've got a variety of direct hires. We've got contractors, and we've got interns. We've got people in the States, Canada, various countries in Europe, India, China, and Australia. With respect to roles, most people in the organization aren't going to interact with Workday outside of their unique profile. It's going to be for things like requesting time off, checking pay stubs, or reviewing benefit documentation. By and large, they're rarely in the application. People who are using it day in and day out are going to be recruiters and potentially managers approving time offs and maybe issuing compensation changes if they're on a hiring team, and they're approving some type of award or things of that nature. Then, there are super users, which includes people like me who are on the technical side doing integrations, supporting, or configuring the native Workday functionality.

It is being used extensively in our organization. Workday is part of our long-term operational technology stack and plans. I definitely see that we'll continue to adopt it, and we'll continue to look at the ways we can extract value from it.

Overall, they do well. I'd rate them an eight out of ten.

I've used some competitor tools. Another tool in the space that tends to be more for small and medium enterprises is Kronos. That's the one where I cut my teeth initially. I switched to Workday because it was a job opportunity. I had taken a position and learned the technology, and that has been more or less my focus or bread and butter for the last eight years. My current company had already rolled out the technology to some extent, and when I was hired, we rolled out additional functionalities.

It is highly complex, and the level of complexity depends on what functionality you're rolling out. If you're rolling out payroll and converting from a legacy system, that's going to be complex. All in all, Workday does a good job to help you be successful, but nevertheless, it's still complex. 

It definitely takes months. A lot depends on the size of the organization. Workday has started to market towards smaller customers or organizations with under 500 employees, which is unique and something new for their business model. Typically, that wasn't their bread and butter. It has always been the medium enterprises or large enterprises. Their sales pitch is that they can stand those customers in 16 weeks. That generally tends to be more in the neighborhood of 20 weeks. If you're a big customer with over 5,000 employees or in the neighborhood of even 50,000 employees, it's not unreasonable that your deployment could take a year or more. Even with Oracle, SAP, or PeopleSoft, your deployment is going to be the same. There's just no way you're going to roll out all the change management and all that technology in a short amount of time. It just wouldn't be feasible.

You get the option to do it in-house, use a third party, or use Workday to help you out with the implementation. All three are available. In my experience, I've been a consultant and have gone through implementations with customers. I've also been a customer and gone through the implementation and leading that. Workday, of course, is very much involved in trying to ensure the success of the overall deployment.

The maintenance and the deployment of the solution are a part of my role. Maintenance is an area in which Workday is really strong because it is native to the cloud, and they keep all their customers on the same version. Workday goes through two big releases every year, and it also has weekly releases, which include just fixes and small features. The cool thing there is you're taking credit for new features being released, but you may not have been the one who was patching the server and things of that nature. That's a really strong suit of Workday. 

By and large, Workday is expensive. It is based on the headcount. I'd probably rate it a three or four out of five in terms of pricing. It'd be like buying a Mercedes or a high-end car. It's expensive, but there's a specific value that you're getting with additional features and things of that nature. Using that metaphor, Workday probably tends to be more of a luxury. There are others like ADP that can do your payroll, your time off, and other things, but they don't do it as well.

It is based on the headcount, and it is based on the number of modules you license. HCM is a module. Payroll is another module, and Benefits is also a module. Each module you choose is going to be an additional cost. In addition, you're also going to have costs associated with test environments. Workday, by default, is going to give you production and a sandbox environment with your license. They're also going to give you a preview environment of what's being released, but if you want additional test environments, there is a license cost.

You would require a really good partner. You would also require in-house expertise, specifically within the technology itself. You need to be able to go out and attract and bring in the talent to help you be successful. You need to understand that doing it really well is going to require more of an investment than what you're hearing in the sales. If you've got 2,000 employees, Workday may say that you could support this entire application with two or three people, but just in my experience, if you have a lot of modules licensed, it's probably not realistic. You're probably not going to extract the full value. You need to understand whether you are okay with not getting everything out of what you're paying for. If so, that's fine, but if you really want to get the bang for your buck, it's going to require an investment. 

You also need to understand that it's going to take time to implement. So, you need to manage expectations and understand what are other priorities in the organization and what the fiscal year looks like. Is it a standard calendar? If you're going through something that's going to impact financials, you're probably not going to want to roll out something really heavy on January 1st. You would want to have that in place prior to that.

Workday also has a financial piece that they offer in their technology stack that competes against Oracle. We don't currently use that, but it is a good piece of technology. They also have a learning management system that integrates directly with the other pieces of data.

Workday's model and what they really preach is this idea of the Power of One. So, they try to get everything within one environment. The sales pitch is that it is going to then reduce the number of other vendors or applications that you would have to have and integrate with, which holds true in some cases. It might not hold true in other cases depending on the needs of the business, budget, internal expertise, and things of that nature. It's just an overarching model that you see in tech where a lot of IT departments want to license the best in class and scale from there.

I'd rate it a nine out of ten. Overall, it delivers a really seamless solution that allows for operational efficiencies and operational excellence. 

We use Workday for employee benefits. 

Workday is a holistic HR solution. 

The solution needs to be updated with generative UI. 

I have been working with the solution for three years. 

The solution is stable. 

Workday is very scalable, and my company has more than 50 users. 

Workday's installation is straightforward. 

We deployed the product in-house. 

I rate the product a nine out of ten. 

I primarily used the report writer; have some experience with EIB integrations as well.

My personal organization does not use it. However, in my clients’ organizations, people really seemed to like the user interface, and the community has been extremely helpful. The regular releases are also very nice. Reporting is a bit of a learning curve coming from an ERP built on a standard relationship database, but once users get the hang of it, it's really quite powerful.

It's great for operational / detailed reporting and some low-level analytics, but for heavy-duty analysis against large data sets, I find it's a bit lacking. For instance, the indexed data sources only work when using non-calculated fields. Most clients have a TON of calculated fields used for reporting purposes, so I find this severely limits the appeal of such data sources. Non-indexed data sources don't perform very well against large datasets compared to a data warehouse / star schema / OLAP cube.

I have used it off and on since 2013; had one project where I worked with it for about two years, another for about six months.

I rarely if ever encountered any stability issues.

The community is super helpful; haven't had to use an actual support ticket thus far.

From a reporting standpoint, there's not much configuration or setup required at all.

The reporting capability is perfectly adequate in 90% of cases, given the requisite training. For "heavy-duty" analytics across very large datasets, consider the integration required for integrating with an on-premise data warehouse, for example... There will be considerable additional overhead in managing the outbound files, SFTP, ETL, etc. from a cloud source vs an on-premise source.

When I used to work on Workday, some of the info wasn't accurate, and I had to double-check via Sage People. The company that bought us wanted to use their own product. Their product was Workday, and our product was Sage People. They told us that Workday is like Sage People, but something didn't add up. I always used Sage People as a backup tool for Workday.

It was more efficient for the agents for their performance reviews, but when it came to HR and the recruitment team, it sometimes worked, and sometimes, it didn't work.

There were a lot of issues. There were consistency or accuracy issues with the data we had, and every time we had to pull reports in Workday, it was difficult. 

I've been using Workday since 2020. It has been around two years. I don't know the version that we had. All I know is that for HR, we've got access to everything, and employees have got access to their payslips, etc.

It was being used by the whole call center with more than 250 agents.

When a company bought us, we were still working on Sage People. That's how Workday came to us. If I could choose between Sage People and Workday, I'd go for Sage People. It's the best.

It's straightforward, but you need to know it in order to work on it. You need training on Workday.

To those considering using this solution, I'd advise doing a proper check. Pay attention and ask more questions.

I'd rate Workday a seven out of ten.